


Dream of Reality

by a_little_chai



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Drug Use, Emotions, Gen, Gen Work, Hints at OCD Reid, Insecurity, Internal Conflict, Logic, Mental Instability, Of course there’s statistics, Panic Attacks, Poker, Reid’s Mental State, Reid’s in it, Showers, Spencer Reid Whump, statistics, walls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 08:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21115658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_little_chai/pseuds/a_little_chai
Summary: He hadn’t planned to get high today. But the scars were calling out to him, and addiction doesn’t care if you’re sharing a motel room with your partner.Suddenly, keeping his life together didn’t seem like such an easy task.





	Dream of Reality

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y’all, thanks for reading! 
> 
> All warnings in end notes.

_“Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” —Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen._

He couldn’t stop staring. The shirt he was wearing today was a light blue, with stripes in a slightly darker navy crossing it. One landed right across the crook of his elbow, right above the little red and pink dots, scattered across the skin there.

Each one represents a hit. Each one is another time he failed the team—his family—and himself. A time he let his own need for escape overrule any logical thought or reasoning. A time where he resorted to his most base instincts, just slightly above the need for food and offspring. 

He scratched at it. A dangerous idea. The scabs were tedious, barely there, and one false move would rip it open and stain blood over the blue. Morgan was just finishing his shower. He’d be out in a minute. What would he think if he knew?

Over forty-two thousand people will die from opiate drugs. An estimated twenty-four point six million people use some type of illicit drug in the U.S. Nine point four percent. 

When did he allow himself to become a statistic? Give in to the emotions he kept locked away? 

But he needed it. So, so badly he needed it. Like there was a string on his heart that was tugging insistently toward his messenger bag, where the needles and a tourniquet and _it _ was. Every moment he resisted pain shot through his chest. It radiated to his temples, made his hands shake. A horrible, horrible pain that made him want to... to... do _ anything _ to make it stop. 

He’d been clean for over three days. Three whole days without any of that sickness coursing through his veins. Was he going to let it get the better of him now? 

Morgan stepped out, a towel wrapped firmly around his waist and water dripping from his hair. It was getting on the floor. His fingernails dug in harder as he heard it _ drip drip drip _ again and again. 

Seventy-five hours. In thirty seven minutes, it’d seventy-six. 

His partner asked something. He responded. It was automatic, almost instinctual. He just copied everything he did before, pretended like he wasn’t just watching himself from behind a glass wall. Like all his focus wasn’t on it.

Somehow, he ended up spouting a statistic about the average rate of growth for a human toenail. _(One point six millimeters a month, if you must know. Although why anyone would want to know that...?) _

Morgan laughed. A glistening sound. Offered to get a pack of cards from his bag and see if he could beat him. He never could, not that it was his fault. You’d think, for a profiler, he’d be better at noticing his own ticks. 

But could he really hide his hands shaking as he held the cards? Or his mind wandering to the little glass of whiskey from the mini-bar that Morgan would no doubt be drinking, wondering if maybe, just maybe, that would take the edge off? No, it was too dangerous. Much, much too dangerous. If Morgan found out, any of the team...

He was going to take a showers, he said. That was normal, right? Just a shower. Wash all the grime that was on his body and hope that he will look well enough that no one suspects a thing. 

That’s what he should do, at least. It had been five days since he’d managed to get under the shower head. A combination of it taking too much effort and not enough, leaving him worn out and jittery at the same time. But this time he had a purpose. He grabbed his bag, keeping his head up and his steps measured and confident. 

Morgan can’t find out, he can’t. 

That was one problem he had realized early on into his addiction; their job constantly required them to share rooms. He was hardly ever alone, even when he was sleeping. So he shot up when he could, hiding in public restrooms and other less-than-ideal places. 

But he wasn’t going to shoot up now, he wasn’t. 

_(Who was he kidding, of course he was going to. You’d think he’d know better than lying, at least to himself) _

The bathroom door closed, and he breathed out a sigh. Looked in the mirror at his much too haggard face, the dark circles that just never went away. Greasy locks falling from his scalp. Disgusting. He rolled up his sleeve, and finally saw those little marks he’d been waiting for. Some were scars, other new and weeping. He kept staring as his knees slowly gave out, and he leaned against the wall. 

Who was he kidding, of course he came in here to shoot up. What other reason would he have for escaping Morgan, bringing his messenger bag in instead of his go-bag? _(Shit, Morgan’s going to notice that) _

What use was there in denying it anymore? What reason did he have for staying clean? 

He got up, somehow. Quickly turned the water on. It ran cold. He put his hand under, savoring the icy tendrils snaking up his fingers. Feeling, something that would disappear in a few minutes. He relished it while he could. 

He let himself sit back down. Reaching over, he pulled his bag nearer. Rummaged through quickly and silently, pulling out all the supplies. He affixed the tourniquet. Tied it tight and kept it there until he could feel his heart beating in his fingers. Perfectly steady at seventy-five beats per minute. Then, shaking, he prepped the syringe. 

Half a milligram, injected intravenously for approximately one minute. One minute where he had to watch as that clear liquid snakes into his veins. 

There was always this moment, after. Where the drugs were still contained by the stretchy band and he was faced with his own failure. The used needle in his hand and blood welling through his skin. A moment of pure reflection. 

And then he ripped the tourniquet off, and surrendered himself to drug-induced catatonia.

~•~

He blinked. Licked his chapped lips and let out a little groan. His head was floating, his entire body. It was unlike anything else, just a sense of pure elation.

He stayed there for an eternity, resting on waves of ecstasy. Nothing could hurt him, nothing could hurt him. 

Until reality came crashing down, in the form of a knock on the door. And this Reality’s name was Dereck Morgan, asking if he was alright. Somehow, someway, he managed to pull his mind out of the gutter enough for his sore throat to choke out ‘yes.’ His mind whirled as fast as it could high as a kite. 

Breathing shallowly. The room spinning. Morgan was going to find out. He was going to come in there and see the blood and the needle and everything he had built would come crashing down. 

No more poker nights, bad games of chess. No more flying on the jet for cases. No more cases, period. No more eating Rossi’s cooking or Penelope’s baking. No more pictures of his godson from JJ, coffee from Morgan. Those little notes written into his files by Hotch, saying that he should focus his attention on this, maybe there was a pattern only he could solve. 

And as the possibility of a life like that loomed near, Logic fought.

When he was younger, he built a wall. It had an image in his mind. Smooth grey brick, miles high. It separated his thoughts from his emotions. While one raged, the other stayed perfectly cool, calm, and detached. A perfect mechanism for staying sane after being bullied all your life. And probably the only reason he wasn’t one of the Unsubs they had on their board. 

The drugs, they knocked that wall down. Took a shining diamond pickax and worked for all it was worth, until he was left without a single statistic or measure of knowledge, crying, laughing, on a dirty bathroom floor. 

Quickly, through his panic and other freed emotions, Logic was fighting. Fighting to rebuild its wall. Made of rickety wood riddled with termites, it stood like a soft breeze would knock it over. And what was currently causing his hyperventilation could hardly be called a ‘soft breeze.’

But it held. And without the ‘what ifs’ and horrible worlds that could happen dominating his mind, he created a list. 

Lists represented order. A set series of instructions for an expected outcome. He had at the most five minutes before Morgan would knock down that door. He had things to do during that period. Things that would keep everything he’d fought so hard for safe.

One: Discard any and all drug paraphernalia scattered on the floor, including the syringe in a sharps box in his bag. 

_(The chance of getting a disease from a used needle can be as high as one in three) _

Two: Undress. He hadn’t brought a change of clothes, and he could hardly walk out in the same ones he was wearing.

_(Argyle means an Irishman from the land of the Gaels. He’s pretty sure his socks aren’t Irish, though) _

Three: Wet his hair. He didn’t have time to actually get into the shower, only to dunk his head under.

_(Washing your hair less often will help preserve natural oils. See, it’s good he’s doing this) _

Four: Try to regain any scrap of intelligence he could, and walk out of there ready to face his friend. 

_(Impossible) _

It wasn’t impossible. Highly improbable, yes, but not impossible. He needed to remember that.

So he started. 

Within three minutes, everything was tucked away. A towel was wrapped around him and his hair was wet. He was shivering; he hadn’t bothered to warm the water. 

Steps one through three were done. He looked like he had showered, his secret safely kept. But step four was still just out of reach. 

He couldn’t think. Couldn’t reach a single fact or statistic or quote, none that mattered anyway. Couldn’t recite any of the poems he usually did to get through the day. And his breathing was too quick as emotions slowly took over everything. 

The list couldn’t be finished. No expected outcome, no perfectly laid out steps. The wall had fallen. Logic fought valiantly, but in the end, Emotions took the crown. 

He looked in the mirror. A ghost was facing him. Dark circles covered its eyes, an almost startling emptiness in the light irises. He couldn’t reconcile that that was him. He was a ghost. 

Cold, numb, rushed through him with that revelation. Of course, he was a ghost. A monster. A parasite that feeds off of others. Of course he was dead. Of course he was gone. Of course of course of course

He tried on a smile. It looked like a mask. Cracked at the corners and peeling in the middle. But it would have to be good enough. 

The wall was gone. But so were the two battling sides. He was wrong; Emotion wasn’t the victor. The battlefield was a graveyard, devoid of even the dead. A barren wasteland. 

Maybe Morgan said something to him. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he walked out there and played cards with the team. Maybe he took his gun from his go bag and shot himself in the head as Raphael should have done all those months ago. 

Or maybe none of this was real, and he was wasting away in some psych ward with only his paranoid delusions for company. 

Or maybe, just maybe, he really was that ghost in the mirror. 

Dead and gone forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings:  
Drug Use  
Very brief mention of suicide. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed, kudo or comment. It makes every author’s day, including mine!
> 
> ~You are loved, and never alone. We are here for you, and you are enough.~


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